


"Love Enough"

by puckity



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Character Analysis, Episode Analysis, F/M, Female Characters, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-06-09 11:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6903493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An essay written in defense of Anna Strong and her relationship with Major Hewlett, post-3.03 ("Benediction").</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Love Enough"

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/post/144315479442/love-enough) on 5/10/16.
> 
> You can follow me [there](http://puckity.tumblr.com/) too, if you want!

It has been an extraordinarily long time since I’ve had an aggressively active ship that has also reached a level of explicit canonicity (the bane of investing in mainly queer ships and of also being a shipping hipster contrarian?) and I’ve found that it–interestingly–comes with its own set of particular anxieties. The most dedicated sections of the Annlett fandom (as far as I’ve encountered them) seem to overlap with passionate Burn Gorman fans; now I’m a card-carrying member of _that_ club so no shade is being thrown there, but it has manifested distinctively in the opinions, interpretations, and meta that I’ve seen and read. Notably, the anxieties almost exclusively revolve around Hewlett–how devastated he will be if Anna’s betrayal is revealed to him, how he has lost everyone else whom he thought he could trust, the almost inevitable conclusion that seems to have been drawn that he’s going to die this season–with Anna’s agencies, sacrifices, and pain being considered largely in reaction to Hewlett’s outcomes (e.g. how much his death would hurt her).

The most recent episode (3.03 “Benediction”–defined as, among other things, [“something that promotes goodness or well-being”](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.merriam-webster.com%2Fdictionary%2Fbenediction&t=OTU3OTcxMmI5Zjg4MmY2MWM2YTMxMDM0Y2ZkZGY3MmI3M2ZhOGVkZCxIUDZwVTBNSA%3D%3D)) has given fans another set of moments and quotes that have inspired both hope and disappointment–again, mainly in reference to Anna’s words and actions. When Abe challenges her decision to marry Hewlett with derision and contempt ( _“Well, what is it about then? Love? Wait…you love him?”_ ), Anna answers:

_“I love him…enough…to save his life.”_

Now my choice of punctuation is telling, and how you punctuate that sentence will determine how you interpret it. It could be (and, it appears, has been) heard as a qualifier, an addendum, a conditionalizing of Anna’s sentiment towards Hewlett. Why would she add “enough” if her love was “full” and “complete” (whatever that means)? Is it even love that she feels, or has she just convinced herself (out of guilt? out of desperation?) that she feels kindly enough towards this man to marry him?

The question at the core of this–and much of the anxiety surrounding Annlett–is then: Can the audience trust Anna to make decisions about her own feelings and (general) desires? Can we trust her expressions therein? There has never been, in fandom, a question of distrusting Hewlett or his feelings; we can argue that he has always been presented as a rather open and unguarded characters (although I don’t know how accurate that truly is), that he has always been direct and clear about his emotions and intentions. But so has Anna–not always to Hewlett (whether originally out of professional/spy reasons or now out of necessity), but always to the audience. We have never seen her express something to another character (again, outside of professional situations, like André’s dinner party) and then turn around and stab them in the back. We have, however, seen several of the main male characters and her closest _friends_ and _lovers_ –Ben, Caleb, Abe–break promises to her and lie to her face. They didn’t kill Simcoe despite her specific request, they continued the charade that Selah was dead–they have lied to her about things that have to do intimately with her and have endangered her personal safety. And they didn’t do it for professional reasons or because they had no choice (it could be claimed that they had to keep Simcoe alive once they were discovered by General Scott, but based off of their promised plan he should have been killed in Connecticut in the pilot episode). They may have felt that they were “protecting” her or that they didn’t know what she would do if she found out, but ultimately it is evident that they don’t trust her. They don’t trust her not to be rash and compromise their missions, they don’t trust her not to abandon the ring if she doesn’t get what she asked for, they don’t trust her to act “objectively” rather than “emotionally” (as if all of them haven’t acted out of unchecked emotions–with frequently disastrous results–more than once before).

Not that Anna has never used these tools herself–she (and Ben and Caleb) kept Simcoe’s survival from Abe in order to manipulate him into continuing to spy for Washington. They did that ostensibly because Abe had made multiple declarations of his intention to quit; there was a credible threat. But Anna never threatened to stop working with the ring, never showed herself to be any more rash than her childhood friends, and never did anything that could even remotely be construed as a betrayal. She didn’t even enter into a consummated affair with Abe until she thought Selah was dead (another instance of Abe’s omission of information being used to take advantage of her) and eventually encouraged a reconciliation with his wife. She has not been perfect, she has made mistakes and has hurt people (most notably, Mary) but she has not denied any rightful claims made against her or tried to shirk responsibilities for her actions. From what the audience has been privy to, she is one of the least duplicitous of all the spies (in terms of her non-spying interactions).

So why do we still distrust her? Why are we still skeptical of the truth and depth of her feelings for Hewlett?

Anna is a character who has had her agency forcibly taken from her at almost every turn; this is a theme with most of the female characters (probably as a commentary on historical/gender realities) but Anna’s losses have been especially brutal. She lost her husband, and all of the social protections that come with that. She seems to have lost the rest of her family pre-series, since there are no relatives who offer her support throughout the seasons. She was first a widow–still bearing the dangers of single womanhood but with a somewhat more secure social standing–and then an (unknowing on her end) adulterer, and finally an abandoner (no matter how noble Hewlett viewed her actions, the rest of the town clearly considers her to be at the very least improper for literally jumping ship at the end of season one). She lost her house and all of her possessions (a complex issue that intersections with her and Selah’s participation in the slave economy, which–while I in no way want to romanticize or excuse their owning of slaves–I won’t be expanding upon here since it’s a long subject for a different post). She had to sell her husband’s tavern, and lost all the protections of being an owner (rather than a single unprotected female worker). She lost not only her social class standing, but also her reputation–something that was consciously chipped away at by several male characters. Abe’s increasingly brazen liaisons (both sexual and professional) placed the brunt of the social shame on her; she was subjected to generalized harassment at her workplace and an unsecured private space (since her room is in the tavern as well), and once Simcoe returned she was placed in very real and imminent danger (regardless of how “gentlemanly” he declared his intentions towards her to be). Without Hewlett agreeing to a public protection, Anna would have–at the very least–had to live in constant fear and distress over what Simcoe would try next. And in a final act of public slut shaming, Simcoe demanded a kiss in return for going to “save” Hewlett which he then turned into an obscene and non-consensual display for more or less the whole town to witness.

Every man whom she has had a relationship with has ultimately seen her as a pawn to be directed (or corrected), and has denied her agency. Ben and Caleb denied her the knowledge to make informed decisions (and be prepared for the impending consequences). Selah denied her the choice of whether she wanted to stay in Setauket or leave, and derided the choices she was forced to make in his absence (e.g. selling the tavern). Abe denied her choices throughout the entirety of their relationship: he made the choice to end their engagement, he made the choice to fully initiate their sexual relationship, he made the choices for basically all of their mutual spying activities and dragged his feet every step of the way whenever she had a different idea. When she wanted to continue spying, he said he was shutting it down (ending his part and thus rendering her job moot). When she wanted to rein in or alter their operations, he flatly rejected her alternatives–not just in her pleas to not kill Hewlett; Abe consistently dismissed her plans (e.g. her introduction of Abigail into the ring). He rarely listened to her reasons even as she patiently heard his, and he often assumed that her motives were wrapped up in him. And they sometimes were (especially in season one when he was her only source of social connection and support), but as her new social circle began to expand–to a cautious alliance with Mary, to responsibility for Cicero, and to her tentative friendship with Hewlett–her social and emotional reliance on Abe began to falter, and he grew to resent that. Because, as with Selah, the only true act of agency she was allowed in her relationships was the severing of them. She leapt from the boat of her own free will, and now she has unequivocally stated that her and Abe’s relationship is over.

_“There is no us, Abe. You saw to that.”_

There was never an “us” for them; Abe made that choice when he broke off their engagement. The timeline could be constructed in a dozen different ways, but what has Anna always struggled with in her feelings for Abe? That he threw her aside, didn’t choose her, whatever his reasons then. That was the moment when he dictated that there would never be an “us” that would offer Anna any true happiness or peace, and she knows that. He doesn’t want to accept it, accuses her of “marrying a man out of spite” (can Abe not fathom that someone could want to be with Hewlett? or can he just not fathom that someone he desired would choose Hewlett over him?) but she shuts him down.

_“I love him, enough to save his life.”_

Anna is not a sadist; she has never been shown to relish violence and death. She has advocated for and/or used violence in self-defense, when her immediate safety and (secondarily) the safety of those she cares about was threatened and–significantly–when she felt she had no other choice. She cares for Abe–she is not indifferent to him, she doesn’t want him dead–and she has successfully bartered here once again his safety. Or did she? It was Mary who put herself between her husband and Hewlett’s pistol and Anna who placed her hands on Hewlett’s chest and begged him as “Edmund” not to shoot. (Does that still sting–is the spite that Abe sees in Anna’s actions actually his own?) And now it is Anna who is doing everything she can–as much as she ever did for Abe–to keep Hewlett alive.

Logically, Hewlett is an increasingly more dangerous threat; the more cynical he becomes, the more awareness of the clandestine world he gains. To kill him would draw unwanted attention to Setauket and a new major–although to stage an accident or something else that wouldn’t be directly linked back to the town could be a possible alternative. Logically, Anna should be doing everything she can to protect herself–distancing herself from Hewlett, leaving the town. Logically, if she is still in love with Abe, she should be working with him to eliminate the threat. There is a lost parallel for (poor) Peggy Shippen here: Anna could have been juxtaposed as a plant to gain Hewlett’s affections and play him for the rebels’ side even up to a loveless marriage–but that was never the plan, and there is no indication that manipulation for her professional/spy role was ever at play for her. In no logical world would her marrying a man just to keep her ex-fiancée from killing him and moving across the ocean to live under the monarchy that she ideologically opposes make any sense.

Anna has never been presented as a romantic. Although we cannot say for certain how her first courtship with Abe went, we can say that from his breaking off of their engagement until now she has never had true agency in her relationships. Even her initial acceptance of Hewlett’s protection was predicated on Simcoe’s return–another choice taken away from her. But it was _Hewlett’s_ return from captivity that she fought for, that she cared about the most, and it was him whom she returned to (although again, with Simcoe still alive, what other real choices did she have?). She flexed her agency again in 3.01 with her request to return to Strong Manor, which was met with Hewlett’s proposal–another prime opportunity for her agency to be denied. But instead, she gave no answer. Was her silence out of guilt and shock–she didn’t know how strong Hewlett’s feelings were for her until then? Was it an evasive attempt to not answer something she didn’t want to deal with yet? Was she simply overwhelmed with the weight of having to hide herself (for her own safety) against someone who was gifting her with emotions not tethered to things like duty and shame and manipulation and submission? Perhaps it was all of these, or none of these. Perhaps she was thinking also in terms of the logistics, of what she was willing to give up. Was she willing to leave her home, since they couldn’t safely stay there (even before Abe declared his intentions of killing Hewlett)? Was she willing to leave her country, the freedom of which she had become so invested in? Was she willing to leave her culture, her friends, her connections? Marriage isn’t just about love, and that is something that Anna knows all too well.

So she gave no answer, and then something happened. No demands were made–her decision wasn’t forced, her choices weren’t taken away from her (at least not by Hewlett). Abe gave an ultimatum, as he is increasingly wont to do, and Anna took back her agency. She said yes.

_“I love him enough to save his life.”_

Maybe “enough” isn’t a minimizer, but a maximizer. Saving someone’s life is often used as a measurement of the deepest love–“I’d do anything for them”. Anna loved Abe enough to save his life before, and maybe that is the point she is trying to make. Whatever else her love for Hewlett is, it is at least as deep and as genuine as her love for Abe was. And Hewlett gave her something–beyond the unconditional support, respect, and admiration that he has consistently reiterated–that Abe couldn’t: he allowed her to make her own choices, and stood by them.

Whatever else is in store for them, I will not be convinced that her feelings for him are lukewarm. Just because she isn’t the poet in their relationship (and how often is the woman granted _that_ distinction) doesn’t mean that her love is any less delicate and beautiful.

And real.


End file.
